Rolling back from Outlook 12 (2007 beta release 2)

I had installed the Office 2007 beta 2 release to a server today, testing out functionality with the product I work on which requires Outlook for MAPI connectivity to MS Exchange. When the time came to rollback, I used the correct uninstall method (Add/Remove Programs) and rebooted before reapplying Outlook 2003.

Now, when opening an existing Outlook profile the app terminates when trying to access the profile settings (you get the lovely ‘do you want to restart in safe mode’ and ‘would you like to detect/repair’ loop going.
Trying to create a new Mail profile (either from the Outlook dialogue or from the Mail applet) resulted in this error:

There was an error locating one of the items needed to complete this operation. It might have been deleted.

Kind of makes sense I guess, the profiles were created in OL12 which was removed but the question is, how the hell do I get out of that loop?

Looking through the registry, the uninstall hadn’t removed the 12.0 keys from

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0

..so I got shot of them, still no dice.

The last thing I checked was Mapisvc.inf – both versions in system32 and %program files%\Common Files\MSMAPI\1033 were identical and hadn’t been modified since i’d installed OL12. Bingo. Once I deleted both of them, the next start of Outlook recreated the files and everything is swimming now.

Lets hope MS remember to clean up a little better in the RC and Gold versions 😀

Using command prompt “run as administrator” and logged in with administrator privileges, I took ownership of mapisvc.inf that’s in the oddly named subfolder of c:/Windows/winsxs, verified that it showed my ID as the owner, then attempted to del mapisvc.inf /f from command line – no dice. “Access denied.” Erase mapisvc.inf /f didn’t work for that file either. Tried rebooting to run from safe mode with command prompt, since that’s the closest thing I can find to trying to get behind Win7 to a DOS prompt, but that didn’t work either. This user has a custom config that took him a few days to install and tweak out, and he’s not the kind that I can just reformat his HDD without him losing his mind and days of productivity. I’m out of ideas here… Anyone else got some insight? OL2003 will not run due to that stubborn mapisvc.inf

Using command prompt “run as administrator” and logged in with administrator privileges, I took ownership of mapisvc.inf that’s in the oddly named subfolder of c:/Windows/winsxs (as described in link from Ian- thanks, man), verified that it showed my ID as the owner, then attempted to del mapisvc.inf /f from command line – no dice. “Access denied.” Erase mapisvc.inf /f didn’t work for that file either. Tried rebooting to run from safe mode with command prompt, since that’s the closest thing I can find to trying to get behind Win7 to a DOS prompt, but that didn’t work either. This user has a custom config that took him a few days to install and tweak out, and he’s not the kind that I can just reformat his HDD without him losing his mind and days of productivity. I’m out of ideas here… Anyone else got some insight? OL2003 will not run due to that stubborn mapisvc.inf

Thank you, thank you, thank you Ian. I was given a 2nd hand laptop as a gift and thought I wouldn’t be able to use microsft outlook. Now I can thanks to you “Rolling back from Outlook 12 (2007 beta release 2) Jul 19th, 2006 by Ian. “